China and some other Asian countries have experienced a large surplus of men of marriageable age. The existing literature studies the impact of sex imbalance using aggregate sex ratios, such as at the county, city, or province level. However, these studies may miss important impacts on health and behavior because the relevance of surplus sons to family decisions mainly stems from pressure conveyed through social interactions with the local reference group.

This paper draws from unique social network data, collected from households' long-term spontaneous gift exchange records (li dan), combined with household panel data from 18 Chinese villages to explore the prevalence of men's localized pressure to get married. The surveyed villages are home to Chinese ethnic minorities, which largely circumvents endogenous fertility decisions on the first-born child due to the implementation of One Child Policy and its associated relaxations afterwards. To identify the effect of pressure to find wives for their sons on parental risky behavior, we focus on comparing families with a first-born boy versus a first-born girl and distinguish the network spillover effect from the direct effect.

The spatial econometric decompositions suggest that the pressure mainly originates from a few friends with unmarried sons and unbalanced sex ratios in the friendship networks, though own village sex ratio and having an unmarried son also affects parental risk-taking behavior. The results are consistent across specifications allowing for long-run and short-run effects. We also find similar patterns for parental working hours, their likelihood to engage in entrepreneurial activities and decision to migrate. In contrast, parents with a daughter do not demonstrate this pattern. Since the sex ratio imbalance in China will probably worsen in the next decade, disentangling the real sources of marriage market pressure may help design policies to improve parental well-being.

Dr. Xi Chen's main research interests involve health economics and development economics in the developing contexts. He recently completed his PhD in applied economics at Cornell. His research seeks to better understand how social interactions affect health behavior and outcomes, how socioeconomic status drives social competition. Most of his current work draws on primary data from China and secondary data from India and Indonesia.

This is co-sponsered with Stanford's Center for Africa Studies

Abstract:

Rural dwellers in the former homeland areas of South Africa are now increasingly defined as rightless subjects, as a result of the undemocratic rule of traditional leadership institutions, and despite the existence of South Africa's progressive post-apartheid Constitution adopted in 1996. Indeed, customary law and traditional institutions are recognised by the Constitution and are meaningful and of practical importance for many rural dwellers. Many rural dwellers have dexterously combined the idiom of custom and the discourse of the Constitution, rather than pitting the Constitution against custom. However, post-1994 traditional leadership laws are not built on such evolutionary hybridisation of the Constitution and custom. These laws stealthily vest significant powers in traditional leadership institutions in ways that potentially undermine rights and create tensions with the constitutionally recognised system and tiers of governance.

About the speaker:

Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara a 2012 Social Entrepreneurs-in-Residence at Stanford and a research associate at UCT Law, Race and Gender Research Unit examines the future of the underdeveloped rural areas in the former homelands, which are increasingly shaped by various conflicts and contradictions: between the Constitution and the official version of customary law; between custom and rights; between traditional councils and municipalities; between rural dwellers and tribal authorities; between rural women and patriarchal tribal institutions; and between imposed tribal institutions and local experiments with community-based systems.

This two-day symposium will bring together lawyers who are litigating human rights cases in international tribunals, lawyers who deploying international human rights frameworks to advance legal reform goals in their respective countries and public policy advocates who are pressing for legal reforms that are more protective of individual rights

This year’s symposium will focus, as a case study, on achieving gender equality through strategic use of both international and domestic strategies.

Goals:

1. To learn about successes with respect to using international human rights mechanisms to mobilize domestic law reform
2. To evaluate the extent to which international human rights mechanisms have had an impact on justice on the ground
3. To strategize on how human rights litigators, domestic public interest attorneys and domestic public policy advocates can more effectively coordinate their work  in order to impact justice on the ground  through international human rights mechanisms
4. To examine in-depth how the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) and monitoring mechanisms are shaped by local activists and how local activists use the international documents and mechanisms to press for change on the ground.
5. To examine the impact of local norms and practices on whether a global consensus is reached on international human rights standards and whether the standards are adopted in a domestic context

Content:

Panels will address :

1. What is the power of human rights ideas for transnational and local social movements and how have these ideas contributed to a rethinking of gender equality around the world?
2. Using gender equality and CEDAW as a case study, have human rights created a political space for reform in particular countries and what have been the key challenges?
3. What key successes have lawyers and advocates had in using international human rights mechanisms to ensure gender equality with respect to organizing, litigation and public policy? 
4. What are the lessons learned from the global gender equality movement for other human rights struggles?
5. Looking forward, what are the key challenges and opportunities for more strategic collaboration between the movement for gender equality and other aspects of  the human rights movement?

Keynotes will include Christopher Stone, the President of Open Society Foundation and The Honorable Judge Patricia Wald. Panelists are Executive Directors or Presidents of innovative human rights and international justice organizations and public interest attorneys from leading public interest legal organizations in Kenya, Nigeria, China,
South Africa, Malaysia, Palestinian Territories, China and Chile.

The Program on Human Rights at CDDRL is proud to co-sponsor this event
and hopes you take advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

For registration details, please visit:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/law/forms/LevinPILSymposium.fb